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Web application performance monitoring company New Relic studied some 42 billion page views. Because many tech savvy sites use New Relic to improve performance, this data provides not just an indicator of where users are today, but where they’re going.

Companies like Google and Facebook have had access to vast amounts of data on how consumers behave on the web for years. Now you can get access to this same kind of Big Data, even if you don’t have their scale.

1. Browser market share: Chrome and IE lead on Windows. Safari dominates the market on Mac and mobile.

On desktops and laptops, Chrome accounted for nearly 40% of page views, IE for a little over 31%. On the Mac, users accessed web sites with Safari just over 60% of the time.

Across all smartphone devices, Safari accounted for nearly 86% of mobile page views.

2. Mobile platform market share: Android leads on mobile, followed by iOS. Android accounted for some 52.9% of web site interactions, followed by iOS (iPhone) with 33.2%. Between them Android and iOS command more than 86% of the mobile market.

There are many factors that impact market share, including product design, price, marketing, and wireless carrier partnerships. One often overlooked factor, however, is the importance of early entry in the consumer smartphone market.

Apple introduced the iPhone in June, 2007. Android beta was released in November, 2007 and the first commercial version was released in September, 2008.

In contrast, Microsoft shipped Windows Phone 7 in October, 2010, about 40 months after the introduction of the iPhone. A product has to be great, perhaps impossibly great, to catch up with that kind of market head start.

3. Mobile: Tablets and smartphones together account for nearly 15% of site traffic. If there was ever any doubt about the increasing importance of supporting mobile devices, there shouldn’t be any longer.

Of course, given that smartphone users use both web sites and native applications, this number likely understates the importance of delivering a high quality mobile experience. But what it certainly points to is the need for companies to deliver a great mobile experience across both native applications and the browser.

For developers, the good news is that on mobile devices, Safari accounts for about 86% of web site traffic. While that doesn’t mean no testing on other browsers, it does mean that developers can focus on delivering a great experience for Safari mobile users.

4. Browser performance: IE 9 and 10 took the lead on Windows. Opera Mini stole the show on mobile, and Safari failed to earn a top 10 spot on Mac.

Safari accounted for over 60% of page views on the Mac but is a relatively slow browser.

Client rendering time and back-end application time both have a significant impact on a user’s web site experience. Browser performance will make your application seem slower for the majority of Mac users, making it extra important to optimize back-end application performance.

By looking at the average number of page views per user per month and the average page load time, I was able to develop an estimate of the total hours the US population wastes each year due to slow web application performance. Combine that with US GDP and the result is about $86 billion in lost productivity.

Market insights are just one example of the many ways Big Data can help companies gain competitive advantage. In the coming months I’ll continue to work with leading vendors to publish useful market metrics based on their datasets.